dhama opened this issue on Nov 12, 2008 · 16 posts
dhama posted Wed, 12 November 2008 at 1:29 PM
After sending a PM the Daz's president, he came back with a reply at Daz3D's Bryce forum. If you haven't already seen it, here is the lates from Dan Farr.
*I am sorry that I didn't post a reply sooner but I do not get my P.M.s from here (technical issues), but someone forwarded me the thread. I was interested hearing some of your concerns, thoughts, etc. and we know that Bryce really has its own unique flavor. Bryce is an important part of the DAZ software line up and one that is loved by many users.
So to address your overall concerns and questions on what is happening with Bryce. As you may imagine, just like many other companies, this year has been a real challenge for DAZ as far as resources go. The first part of the year we were ramping up our development staff to be able to handle our efforts across all of our applications but due to cash flow we needed to focus mainly on DAZ Studio and Carrara 7.0. We have been forced to evaluate our product mix and figure out the best way to manage our efforts going forward. One thing that we have seen is the inefficiency of having to develop the same feature multiple times to have it in every application. We are pushing to have more continuity between the applications and where possible share technology (unified code base is not a near term possibility but only a long-term dream).
We also recognize that work flow between applications is something that we need to find a more consistent way of handling. We have discussed integrating Bryce and Carrara, as some of you had suggested above and with some of the same conclusions around the difficulty of work flow. That is not a show stopper for that approach but definitely a challenging obstacle nonetheless.
So where does that bring us now? We are focused on getting a successful release of Carrara 7.0 to market as soon as we can. With that release, we can more fully address the overall software roadmap possibilities and weight them against the challenges of different courses. We are still investigating all options around Bryce and its future either as a 100% stand alone application or something more closely integrated with another one of our other applications.
Although we currently don't have any news about the next version of Bryce it still is an amazing application. Its features are very robust and accessible. The first part of 2009 we plan to gain a clearer view of the future development for Bryce and be able to share that information with you.
I realize that this email is not good news but I hope that it is not bad news in that we still see a strong future for Bryce and plan to do what we can to provide exciting new features in the years to come. We sincerely appreciate your support, passion and general love for Bryce and look forward incorporating your feedback in future releases.
Sincerely,
Dan
We do still have plans to continue developing Bryce but are uncertain as to whether that will be on its code base or that of one of our other applications. There are some very strong Pros and Cons for either approach and maybe some new options that we haven't considered yet.
Dan* __________________________
*Although the wheels of development move very slowly they are still moving in a direction that will lead towards better integration between applications and better usage of 3D content and assets.
Dan
Thanks again for your thoughts and understanding of the position we are in. To hear thoughts about other 3D applications and their struggles with their communities reinforces concerns around the 3D software business in general. There was a time when the applications would bring in lots of money for company's that they could reinvest back into future development efforts. As many of you would know, Avid and Autodesk recently announced the pending acquisition of Softimage by Autodesk. At the announced purchase price, it is seems that Avid is likely selling because they were not doing well enough financially with Softimage and Autodesk is buying because they want to reduce competition.
So with this being the case it is all the more important that DAZ a much smaller company many others in this area makes sure that our development efforts hit the mark. We don't have a lot of room for developing and delivering software (or content for that matter) that does not provide the necessary returns on our investments. This why we are taking a very careful approach to defining our software roadmap.
Hexagon also faces some similar challenges as Bryce. We had updated releases on it more recently than Bryce (Hexagon Bridge, etc.) but it is also part of our software roadmap discussions around the best approach for moving it forward. We do feel it is a great product as well and has a lot to offer.
Dan